Page 77 of Magic Cursed
Ritual
Icontinue to struggle, refusing to give up. “Enough,” he says like a growl into my ear, and instantly I know who’s on me.Kellan. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“But what?” I ask. “You will!”
“If you leave me no choice.”
“You’ve always had a choice, Kellan. But I find it interesting that when you think you don’t have one, your first instinct is violence.”
“I was taught by the world we live in. Either I adapt to it, or I become a victim of it. I’ve learned to adapt.”
“No, you were taught by a close-minded father who has a prejudice against magic users.”
He doesn’t respond, instead, he barks an order to a guard. “Put them on her ankles.”
The burning sensation of the ash-steel closes around my ankles and I think about Kellan as a child and how he was so cruel to me then. Kellan turns me around. His face is hard, and he points his sword at me. “Get up,” he orders.
“So, if a magic user doesn’t just go along with your limited way of thinking, then they’re labeled as an enemy?”
“I said get up,” he says with an exasperated sigh. “To your feet, Sky.”
I slowly push off the ground with my hands and balance on my feet, wondering how I can fight out of this when I have nothing more than a couple inches of chains between my steps.
“Is that what I am now, Kellan? Am I the enemy because I want to find peaceful solutions?”
He sheaths his sword at his hip. “You’re not my enemy, Sky, but you are dangerous. I can’t let you endanger yourself or others. You’re important.”
I take a step toward him and lower my voice. “Just let me go, Kellan. We both know I was never going to stay around for very long anyway. Let this be where we part ways.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why? I got you here and we didn’t run into a single shadow demon. Just let me go and I’ll forfeit my payment for getting you here. You should be fine on the way back because you’re going to take care of the shadow demon problem, right? That’s why you came all this way in the first place, isn’t it?”
“Come,” he avoids my eyes, and pulls on the manacles at my wrists.
I start to wonder if he was ever going to let me go. A tinkling sound fills the air just before Elsie drops from the sky and scratches first the guard across the back of the neck, and then Kellan. The Steel Guard drops to the snow.
Elsie turns to me and slows to a hover to give me one of her cat-like smiles. But my heart skips a beat as a memory runs through my mind. Kellan talking with his resident sorcerer, Mr. Nahva. Her venom won’t work on him.
“Elsie, watch out!”
Instead of dropping to the ground, Kellan strikes out at Elsie in one precise spot between her wings. She cries out and falls from the sky to land in the snow.
“No!” I drop to my knees next to her. She’s still alive, but she has trouble pushing herself up to sitting. She flutters her wings, but no tinkling sound comes, and she doesn’t take flight.
Kellan stares at Elsie and then at me with wide, accusatory eyes. His upper lip curls in disgust.
“You know this bloodsucker?” he asks. “You care about her.” He says it like the statement tastes bad in his mouth. “How could you care about a creature that’s goal in life is to drain the blood from humans.”
“Gods you’re ignorant,” I snap. “That’s not her main goal in life.”
“I don’t know,” Elsie says with a sneer at Kellan. “I’m thinking it might be now.” She tries to fly again but can’t. “What did you do to me, you vile human?”
Instead of addressing Elsie, he turns to me. “You can let it know that it won’t be paralyzing anyone ever again or flying. She’s forever without magic now.”
“Impossible,” Elsie says and flips her hands, palm side up, trying to extend her claws, but no venom-filled nails extend. She does it again, with the same results. She again tries to fly but stays on the ground. I meet her gaze and for the first time since I met Elsie, her face is full of anguish, and her shoulders cave in defeat.
“None of this will matter after tonight anyway,” Kellan says. “Our lands will be free of their kind and the other races soon enough.”